The pharmaceutical industry is one of the largest income generating industries in the world. As revenue in this industry has steadily increased, it has become increasing important to determine the cumulative volume of sales for individual pharmaceutical products, e.g., penicillin, or groups of pharmaceuticals, e.g., “pain killers,” during a predefined time period. At present, the cumulative volume of such pharmaceutical product sales can be provided only once actual sales data for the predefined time period has been received. Thus, if cumulative volume data is needed for a particular calendar month, such data will not be available until all wholesalers in the given predefined market have reported their actual sales to retail outlets for every day in the requested month.
It would be beneficial to determine a projected cumulative volume of pharmaceutical sales during the current month. Unfortunately, to date such techniques are not available because multiple erratic parameters exist in such an analysis, such as lower sales due to a national holiday, making such analysis speculative at best.
Accordingly, there exists a need for a technique to provide an accurate and robust forecast of the cumulative monthly amount of sales of individual pharmaceuticals, or groups of pharmaceuticals, to retail outlets in a particular geographic market.